Recent reviews by Cakefish

The best co-op game I’ve played in a long time. Improves in almost every way over the already great original Remnant. The main storyline is a weak point with a somewhat confusing ending that isn’t explained all that well, but hopefully DLC expands upon this in time. The game is still a whole load of fun in single player mode too.

I didn't expect to enjoy this game quite as much as I did. The art design is exquisite and really draws you in and it has a great soundtrack to complement the stand-out visuals too. The story has a bit of slow start, but is brought to life by some truly stunning cutscenes, and it ends with a satisfying conclusion. The gameplay is decent. Combat can get a tad repetitive, with a relatively limited moveset and not a great deal of enemy variety, but never to the point of tedium. Puzzles deliver the welcome 'a-ha!' moment without ever being so taxing as to be frustrating. The combat difficulty of boss battles definitely keeps you on your toes, I had to drop it down a notch despite being somewhat of a veteran of the souls-like genre.

My biggest gripe with this game is the performance. It sadly stutters a lot, even on powerful hardware (RTX 3080 and i9-9900K). A shame that this blemishes the otherwise impeccable presentation. It's never so bad that it becomes unplayable, the stutters just end up being an occasional distraction. From what I've seen online the PS5 delivers a more consistent stutter-free experience so that might be the way to go if the option is available.

Overall I had a huge amount of fun with this one, will definitely be replaying it at some point. Easy recommendation!

A lovely little gem of a game. It's all about the atmosphere and ambience. They've nailed the visuals and soundtrack. It really makes you want to explore every nook and cranny of the city and embrace the cat life. I also like the designs of the robots, they're surprisingly expressive. There's always a sense of momentum and nothing overstays its welcome.

If I had one criticism, I'd say the ending can catch you by surprise as the game just sort of stops. In terms of narrative it delivers a decent conclusion, but gameplay-wise the final puzzle feels oddly anticlimactic versus some of the more intense and exhilarating set pieces/puzzles found earlier in the game. It's a game about the journey rather than the destination, and being left wanting more is far from the worst flaw a game can have!

Overall an easy recommendation.

It plays a lot like old Telltale games did, but I feel the time rewinding mechanic helps give this game its own unique style. I really enjoyed the story and characters here. Max is a very likeable and relatable protagonist. The graphics are showing their age a bit from a technical perspective, but the visual aesthetic holds up very well. The soundtrack is really great too.

I completed this a few days ago and am still thinking about both the ending and the journey there, I think that's the sign of a good narrative.

Fun, dangerously addictive and offers a ridiculously huge amount of customisation options and variety in the way that you can play. It gets frequent free updates and quality paid content that keeps the game feeling fresh and keeps me coming back time after time.

The characters all have a quirky charm and there's humour mixed in that managed to tickle me often. Gameplay is the classic 3D platformer style, good fun for the most part though it does have rare unwelcome difficulty spikes here and there. A decent amount of variety in the mission goals and level design. Simple but effective art design and decent enough graphics, though it does have a tendency to stutter on the odd occasion even on powerful hardware. Overall though it's a game that really endeared itself to me. It's a game that is a tiny bit rough around the edges but harkens back to the good old nostalgic days when games were simply designed around having fun - and fun the game is indeed!

Feels like a modernised version of SimCity 4 in many ways. It has been well supported by the developers post launch, with new content added via free patches and paid DLC, even now on the cusp of 2023. Gameplay possibilities are further expanded through good mod support. The underlying game engine is starting to show its age, so I hope that a sequel is in development to improve key areas such as traffic and population simulation, but in the meantime this is still the best city building simulator on the market.

An amazing gem that stands out in TellTale's already star-studded line-up. Through genuinely witty and funny dialogue, they manage to make every character endearing and likeable in their own flawed way. Even the robot characters have far more personality than the vast majority of characters found in other video games! They take existing well-loved characters in the Borderlands universe (such as Handsome Jack, Athena and Scooter) and build them up with far more depth than they had in the main games in the series. And the original characters are just as well-formed (with the likes of Gortys, Loader Bot, Fiona, Sasha, Rhys, Vaughn, Vasquez etc.) all earning their place as some of my favourite fictional characters of all time - not just those found in video games. The story balances light-hearted moments of comic relief with scenes of great emotional weight expertly. A single scene can manage to elicit laugh-out-loud moments and at the same time watery eyes - and it all blends so well. The characters are not only incredibly well-realised (bravo to the talented voice actors, writers and animators) but also enjoy meaningful character development that drives the plot forward throughout the tale. All of this is aided by an amazing collection of licensed songs, that make each opening credits scene a pure joy to experience (in tandem with their brilliant choreography that fits the music so well).

Tales from the Borderlands earns its place as my new favourite amongst TellTale's portfolio (I never thought The Walking Dead seasons could be topped). It is their best work yet and makes me incredibly excited for what they will bring next. I can't wait for Season 2!

Worst PC port that I have ever had the displeasure of purchasing. It is so bad that it compels me to write my first ever negative review on Steam - with under an hour of gameplay too! That's how broken this product is!

Why? Fullscreen mode is completely broken - black screen flashes, audio stutters, runs in super slow motion, requires task manager to escape and causes entire PC to become unresponsive in the process.

OK. How about borderless windowed mode then? Nope. Greys out the resolution options in the graphics menu and forces the game to render at native resolution (which happens to be 4K in my case). As a result, completely unplayable framerates.

If I hadn't have pruchased from GMG I would be refunding in an instant. Sadly, I am forced to live with this unsuable, useless port until a ptach *maybe* fixes my issues.

Buyers beware. Be very wary indeed.

I'm about half-way through this game, so my opinion is potentially subject to changing as I dive deeper into this world. But, oh boy, do I want to dive deeper!

It may not have as interesting a world to explore from a lore perspective - much of the story is centred around how similar the land of Drangleic, and the characters who inhabit it, is to the land of Lordran that came before it (and featured in the original Dark Souls game) - rather than creating a new and interesting world in it's own right. However, there is still a unique atmosphere to be found whilst exploring this game world that few other games are able to create; just not to the same extent as the original game.

The areas of the game world are not as expertly crafted, as was the case with the original game either; geographical and physical impossibilities abound make this game world feel less genuine and more 'gamey'. This doesn't actually bother me anywhere near as much as it does some people. That's not to say that it's all bad news. This game introduces more variety in it's colour palette and the visual design of areas much earlier into the game than it's predecessor does. There is still the option to explore various paths in a non-linear order, though the game world is designed to be more akin to the separate branches of a tree, rather than the interweaving threads of a spider's web, as was the case in Dark Souls 1.

The soundtrack is also a step down from the original game, Excluding the theme of the hub world of Majula, it's mostly a forgettable affair. Perfectly serviceable, but not in the same league as the Dark Souls 1 soundtrack.

Enough of the downsides though, what does this game do better than the original? Quite a lot, actually. The UI is much more streamlined and friendly to navigate, especially the much better designed inventory. The graphics are a notieceable improvement over the original game, along the with the framerate and other technical aspects of the PC port - unlike the original game this port is perfectly fine without the need of external 3rd party mods from community members. The gameplay is refined in some aspects, notably for players who like using bows and arrows as part of their weapon arsenal, for these are now far more versatile and less clunky to operate. The online features have undergone a major under-the-hood upgrade, with co-op summons becoming much more reliable in this game compared to the constant failure messages of the original Dark Souls. Additionally, the fact that the game is slightly more forgiving in terms of accidental NPC deaths and other aspects is a welcome change, in my eyes. The addition of warping between areas at will from the start of the game and the ability to respec your character at various points throughout the adventure helps to give the player character a greater sense of freedom than before.

In terms of difficulty I feel that the complaints that the game has been made much easier than the original are unwarranted. I personally have found the first half of this game far more difficult than nearly the entire journey through Dark Souls 1, including the DLC. Much of this is because extremely powerful weapons, that are capable of remaining useful throughout the entire game (e.g. Black Knight Sword of DS1), are no longer available to very new characters very early into this game. Combimed with more frequent occasions of facing multiple enemies at once, this makes this game no less difficult than the original in my eyes. Overall, I feel that this game is tailored more aorund co-op play than the original, which is better balanced for the singleplayer experience - luckily, the fact that the co-op is much more reliable in this release pretty much saves the game from feeling too punishing.

Overall, this game is fantastic. Whilst it may not be able to replicate the finely crafted and atmospheric world of the original game, it still is a great adventure in it's own right. It improves upon many aspects of the original, as any worthy sequel should. I definietly do not believe it to be the abysmal disgrace to the Souls series that some people claim it to be. To me, such talk is ridiculous hyperbole. It's still a Souls game and therefore still a more satisfying and rewarding experience than the majority of modern games released today. Definitely recommended.